“Well, Liberty’s a target, you know.”
She said it nonchalantly, over tea with honey in a local coffee shop. And I responded in much the same way—a “Yeah, I know,” that (hopefully) didn’t reveal the turn in my stomach. We moved on easily from potential terrorism to our plans for the weekend.
Liberty recently decided to employ metal detectors and bag checks in the entrances of the Vines Center before thrice-weekly convocations. Ostensibly a safety measure, the increased security led to long lines, late arrivals, and a genuine headache for students and other attendees. These problems were well-recorded by students on Twitter and Facebook.
However, even before the security measures had begun on the inside of Vines, there was an interesting development on the outside: the placement of several large concrete balls around the perimeter of the building.
The spheres went up without aplomb, without a write-up in the Champion or even an email notification. My friends jokingly guessed that they were to emphasize our “global” focus, or for some kind of decoration, or to contain the inevitable lines for convo.
I knew immediately, with a sink in my stomach, that they were to prevent cars ramming into students waiting for convocation.
And here I was with my friend, casually discussing convocation security measures over late-night tea. Offhandedly bringing up the fact that we are likely targets. Calmly and coolly discussing the potential deaths of ourselves and our friends. Moving on to our weekend plans without so much as a pause.
I’m not a naturally anxious person. But in the past year, I’ve somehow acquired a low, lingering fear. It settles at the pit of what I call my stomach but is really my small intestine. And then occasionally it rises, and it rises, and it rises—if I’m lucky, it stops in my chest, holding itself in my lungs and making me aware of my breath.
But the minute I saw those giant spheres, it rose all the way to my temple.
In July of 2016, a driver drove into a crowd during Bastille day celebrations in Nice. Since then, there have been 9 terrorism attacks involving cars running into crowds of people. 86 killed in Nice. 11 at Ohio State. 12 in Berlin. The list goes on.
The spheres that were meant to protect us only reminded me of yet another vulnerability.
Usually I would take a thought like this, work it into my yes-I-could-die-in-a-terrorism-attack framework, and then shove it down into my small intestine. Make myself numb to that fear again. But these spheres have lingered, and I’ve brought them up to my friends in turn.
What has bothered me most is the universality of the numbness. When I bring up my small-intestine fear to my friends, they readily admit that they have it too. And then the conversation stops. There’s nothing more to say.
We’ve become numb to the danger. Or at least, we want to seem that way.
I don’t have an answer to this. I recognize that numbness is preferable to crippling anxiety, and that living in the world involves inherent risk, and that there’s no guarantee of safety anywhere.
But there’s something surreal about hundreds, maybe thousands of college students that can treat the possibility of a campus attack with the same nonchalance that they would treat the possibility of a liberal speaker in convocation.
Liberty is a microcosm of a world that is, at any given moment, on the brink of earth-shattering disaster. Our numbness is the world’s numbness. It’s a reflection of our powerlessness in the face of random violence that can be overwhelming at times. Our numbness protects us from fear that would cripple—and yet that fear still seeps through. I feel it every time I hear a plane fly close to the library.
“Liberty’s a target—” Yeah, I know. I know it very well.
So what are your plans this weekend?
